ANSWERED:AP: Eggs no longer dropping normally

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I am posting this as suggested by TJ after I pointed out some recent oddities about the AP. To sum up: the AP is no longer behaving as expected, that is to say, eggs are no longer coming into the AP in order of their timers. Some eggs are abandoned, reach "AP times" or lower, and are still not appearing in AP. Hopefully the following summary of observations will be enough evidence to point out that something really is broken.

First, a few days ago, the AP started displaying eggs non-chronologically, with fairly wide disparities in times. No, I'm not talking a few lower time eggs getting abandoned and suddenly showing up in the top row of the AP, as is usual. This was a lot more messy, with a real mix of different times. (Screenshot below).

Spoiler

However this actually settled the next day, now eggs have been showing up in an apparently chronological order. Everyone assumed AP was "fixed".

But people started noticing that things actually weren't back to normal because some eggs that should've been hitting AP simply weren't. Basically, some eggs were dropping before the (now stable looking) AP times and yet neither getting picked up nor showing up in AP. If it were just a couple eggs, I would assume we missed them appearing in AP and they were picked up fast, by someone whose scroll name isn't visible. But this was a lot more eggs. Here are some examples with varying levels of proof:

- An Aqualis massbreed a couple of days ago that did not show up normally at all. It did not wall, not because eggs were being picked up, but because eggs were not showing up. They were below AP times but were not appearing in the bottom row. Finally some started showing through in the top row, a couple at a time, over a long period of time.

- Terrafreaky's last massbreed. I actually know less about this one since I didn't see when it was supposed to hit, but a few days after, when the eggs were around 1d12h (and then lower), they started showing up in the top row as well, a few at a time. Now I suppose it's technically possible that a group of people (this was way too many separate eggs to be one person) could've hatched a plan to grab the Terrafreaky eggs, age them down a bit, then re-abandon them one or two at a time in a slow trickle but that seems.... not very plausible, right?

- A further example of this behaviour from today: another player took screenshots of all these 1d6h eggs dropping within 5 minutes. Again, this could theoretically be a band of users doing this on purpose but... really?

- Yesterday a large amount of Catz's eggs should have hit AP. Not strictly speaking a wall (some BSAs and 400 checkers of various breeds), but a massbreed. The BSAs seem to hit in a slow fashion, but the checkers (bred a few hours later) again barely hit AP at all. They were very easily identifiable as Catz had given them 300 UVs so they were fully cracked. At this point, many of us were stalking AP for proof, so we would not have missed them. Catz stalked AP for all the time they should have been dropping, saw only a handful. Many of them appear to have never hit, then hatched "in limbo", and are presumably now high-time AP hatchies, therefore not visible in AP currently. Here is the group that they were massbred from: https://dragcave.net/group/67385

This is currently viewed as a problem by many of us (by us I mean the Unofficial Discord community because this is where I have been discussing this, can't speak for anyone else) because this unpredictability makes it impossible to successfully rescue a specific egg from AP, and also some breeders don't feel like they want to breed to AP anymore because they have no idea if their eggs will even ever hit the AP.

I would also like to point out that this is not some theory that one person came up with that got coopted and blown up. These observations have been made by many different people who independantly came into the chat asking "hey what's up with the AP, has anyone else noticed something weird?". As such, please take it seriously.

Finally I did see your comment, TJ, about the average age of AP eggs not being affected or something. Unfortunately I definitely don't know enough about your admin view of AP to really respond to that in any constructive way... Perhaps it's a question of volume?

Thank you for your time, and please fix AP.

- An avid AP hunter

Edited July 27 by Aalbiel

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I do hope this issue gets fixed soon. I bred 400 or so eggs, as you mentioned, entered them ALL in Silvis so they would have a stack of UVs for easy hatching when they were picked up, furiously watched the AP during that time, and saw maybe 15 eggs of mine tops. I've bred to the AP many times and always enjoy watching them drop and hearing about them being picked up. It floods with checkers, SAltkins, avatars and BSAs. This batch dropped like nothing I have ever seen in past batches, even with their cracks and holes. I've done this before and always watch them hit in a flood, but not this time.

I really hope this gets fixed soon.

Editing to add that there seem to be "waves" of 1 day+ eggs from Terrafreaky dropping. They don't drop all the time, just in waves. Also yesterday, at the top of the AP, there was a row of about 10 to 12 Neotropicals. My sister filled up her egg slots with Neotropicals, and I watched her slots fill, but the amount of Neos never decreased in the AP. They were replaced by more Neos. I also did the same thing with a semi wall (not an entire wall, so you could have easily seen if something was taken) with Mints, I took 6, but the amount in the ap didn't decrease, the section just replaced itself. Something is definitely wrong.

Edited July 27 by catzrule1990

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Yeah I gotta say, if this is unintended it's not great cus things keep vanishing and reappearing later or not at all, at least until they're entirely uninfluenceable. I've never seen such a large number of lowtime eggs get dropped one after another, especially not lowtime desirable eggs like xenos, zyus, and undines. @Xylene Has also mentioned in the official Discord breeding a wall of neos, most of which seem to be in limbo, as well as a large number of shallow water hybrids after it, both of which gained no views until checked by xylene themself.

The aqualis wall mentioned was even checked with the https://dragcave.net/random/egg link a day before it got readjusted; that is, as far as I know it used to show all eggs that were previously abandoned by someone and not picked up by someone else yet, including in-limbo massbreeds, and checking it repeatedly would bring up multiple aqualises that were already hours below normal AP time yet barely trickled into the AP one at a time, if at all.

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Personally, the walls never bothered me at all, instead of hunting for eggs in that time, I could go through my own dragons and breed stuff I wanted to work on or gift. As someone who wanted to make a Pillow wall one day, I can see the joy in sharing your favorite breed with others. Plus, the complaints seem very inconsistent- No one uttered a complaint with Process tried to wall the AP with Salty mints, but Lamb walling with nocturnes is awful. I just see two breeders wanting to share their favorites with everyone, but because one isn't a 2g salt its bad? I can go on on this topic, but I digress.

The wall being abnormal makes hunting for auto APd eggs for someone much more difficult, and it just makes it unfun to breed to AP as you fear most of your eggs will just.. vanish. Catz and I bred to the AP together sometime ago and enjoyed seeing people exclaim they caught some of our eggs. Breeding lots of BSA, metals, avatars, salts to the AP becomes more of a chore than enjoyment since most eggs might never get picked up. All in all, I want the old AP back- walls and all. so if the problem could be resolved, it would be lovely

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I just picked up this egg bred by Terrafreaky on July 21 (1 d 5h left). Most of the eggs in the AP are at 4d 4h. It has definitely not been in the top row for 3 days or so! Pity this is happening because these are nice checkers that are now not influenceable and this one precogs female, which spoils the checker! https://dragcave.net/lineage/YTy9K

The whole top row of the AP at the moment consists of such eggs. This is definitely not normal behavior for the AP.

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It's bounced up to 2-3 rows now. And these are definitely not all the same eggs we've been seeing for an hour bc they've been being hatched and grabbed consistently. New interesting eggs keep coming at the end of the line, like hybrids and uncommons.

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This is so interesting, I wonder what's going on. Not that I am complaining, because the eggs that I breed are often the breeds I am currently working on freezing. I'll see if I can run into any that I can't pick up because no one else has touched them yet.

ETA: I believe I've found one that I couldn't pick up because no one else had yet. It looked like it was still in the AP after I refreshed.

Edited July 27 by Terrafreaky

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I was wondering what was happening. I like to catch low time but still influencable eggs (so, in the 3 day range) for experimenting. while it's not unusual to see the occasional one day egg when someone dumps their scroll its extremely weird to see so many.

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Also confirmed at least 10 babies (far too lazy to look at all 350 - 400) of mine that should have dropped were never picked up. When they were 4 days, 10 hours, so was the AP. Some of mine were 4 days, 8 hours as well, but a lot of them never appeared. When they were lower timed than the AP, they still didn't drop. When they hatched 8 to 10 hours later at "4 days left", the AP was 4 days 9 hours-ish. Their "accept aid" message changes when I change mine from not accepting to accepting, proving they were not picked up and were/are trapped in some kind of void.

Some of my avatars didn't hatch for about another 9 hours after that (we all know how stubborn they are), but their message changes when I change mine (the ones I checked anyway), also proving they, too, were/are trapped in a void timed much lower than the AP.

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Anyway to give specifics, I bred my Neo x Gemshard and Neo x Gaia lines to the AP, then some Shallow Water dragons I had found on my scroll, in that order. Some, but not all, of the Gemshard and Gaia lines have been picked up- can't be certain that none of them were, though, so I only looked at the Shallow Waters before deciding something was funky.

In total I bred 41 Shallow Water eggs to the AP, and they were at 3D 21h when the AP itself was displaying 4d 6h eggs. When I first checked random ones, they all had 0/0/0 stats; when I checked every one of them, 38 had 1/1/0 (because I'd checked them), and 3 had 1/1/1 (because I had to go through the parents' progeny pages to see the eggs. I believe it counted as a click). None of the eggs had a user attached, and all had the same warning about users not accepting aid, so I believe none of them were picked up.

I should specify I'm not complaining about how the AP is or isn't working. I just thought it was interesting. :3c

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One more confirmation that things are vanishing from sight even when I know they should be there: 2 day 10 hour nocturnes were appearing occasionally in ap. I'm locked, and I try to grab one, and I overburden on it. That's normal, it's still in the AP and I can still grab it if I keep the page open while I unlock. If it gets grabbed in any way it'll say it can't be found and its randomized get code is no longer valid. So, I know it hasn't been grabbed yet. I check the AP anyway and despite it being drastically lower timed than the rest of the AP, there were no more 2d10h eggs appearing in AP. However, the get link was still valid. I refresh the overburdened page to check several times, toss a higher time egg, and refresh again and it's available to grab despite vanishing from the ap.

Edited July 28 by Shadowdrake

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It would be nice to be able to influence eggs I like now but a lot of the ones from massbreeds I would have normally taken are at such low times when they show up you can't influence them. Rather annoying.

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If this is a method of stopping the walls it's definitely not the right way to go about it; too many things are negatively impacted by it and it doesn't really seem to be dependent on breed, just easier to track via breed. This feels like a bug.

Sadly I personally don't have any proof aside from watching the AP and seeing that things weren't dropping like they should.

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I agree. I don't go through 4 and a half hours of work trying to breed nice things for the community, entering them in a hatchery for a nice bonus, and APing, just for the majority of them to wind up in a black hole, totally unseen. I don't know if hatchlings are exempt from the AP's void, but even if they are, half of them are going to gender wrong. Definitely not going to breed anymore until it is fixed. There's just no point in breeding nice things if most of them are going to go off into a void and never even have the chance to be picked up. :/ Takes all the fun out of it.

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I'm following this and tracking what's going on to make sure it doesn't get worse, but I believe it's going to sort itself out as eggs cycle through the AP, so I'm not currently doing anything proactive here.

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I absolutely love the new walls! No more annoying lock ups, there are low times in the first few eggs and it ranges, the wall doesn't get static with eggs that just don't move, and it just keeps rotating, I've sat in it for a while and I have noticed eggs repeat, but it takes time. So eggs do reappear, this is perfect! I think those who didn't like the walls need to pop in and say how they like the new wall before our silence is taken as an affirmation of Fuzzys statement about us not liking it. I think its a mass improvement!!!

kudos TJ if you did it on purpose

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I agree. I don't go through 4 and a half hours of work trying to breed nice things for the community, entering them in a hatchery for a nice bonus, and APing, just for the majority of them to wind up in a black hole, totally unseen. I don't know if hatching are exempt from the AP's void, but even if they are, half of them are going to gender wrong. Definitely not going to breed anymore until it is fixed. There's just no point in breeding nice things if most of them are going to go off into a void and never even have the chance to be picked up. 😕 Takes all the fun out of it.

see I never minded nicely bred lineages, but most don't even pay attention to the mates, they just pop them out to fill the board, not out of any altruistic need to supply well bred eggs.

*really hopes it does not sort itself out*

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I would be fine with that if it would keep the eggs above 3 days so they can be influenced. But I picked up at least 8 very low time eggs yesterday that I ended up throwing back because they precogged wrong for their checker and I couldn't use them. What a waste of beautiful lineages!

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I thought I noticed something weird going on but I didn't really pay close attention unfortunately. I hope it is fixed soon, I don't like the idea of eggs falling into a void, never to be seen again. =\

And I just want to add that I don't mind the walls, if it's a breed I'm not interested in, I just go do something else.

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I hope the AP reverts to it's proper state. It wasn't broken and did not need fixing. This isn't an improvement. Hunting Thuweds or tying to retrieve missing eggs for other users would be significantly more difficult.

Walls are fine. The low times that come after them are a reward everyone can enjoy. No one wants a 6 day AP. Don't like the wall? Breed something, use your shards, or perhaps cave hunt. There are many other facets to this game.

It doesn't need changing and I look forward to seeing it return to its proper state.

Edited July 28 by BrazenChase

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I would be fine with that if it would keep the eggs above 3 days so they can be influenced. But I picked up at least 8 very low time eggs yesterday that I ended up throwing back because they precogged wrong for their checker and I couldn't use them. What a waste of beautiful lineages!

there are still mostly those above 3 days, its really only 3 or 4 that's under the 3 day limit, the rest range, ya'll make it sound like every egg on the board is under 3. I influence sometimes but mostly I let them become what they are, and influences does not mean it will 100% of the time be that anyway. Also not sure why influence can not be done under three days, its a bit arbitrary, but that's the name of the game here.

There's no real reason for any of the rules, and "that's the way its always been" is really a very poor excuse for keeping things status quo. But thats not really for this thread, so I digress(ed) lol

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Oh it needed changing, people were getting way carried away with breed walls, once in a while was fine but they were abusing it. But TJ has implied this is a fluke so its not intentional, just ride it out people, unfortunately it will return its its egg blocking state soon.